The Interior Life

I've been a Christian for over 35 years, and I hate to admit how many of those years were spent thinking that the mot important thing in my Christian walk was attaining knowledge about God, rather than knowledge "of" God. There is a difference and I've been too slow to recognize that difference and pursue the latter.

We cannot attain knowledge of God without experiencing Him. We experience God to the degree that we seek to spend time with Him. It's really not that difficult to understand. We can attain a huge amount of knowledge about another person, but we only really get to know that person by spending time with them. It isn't any different with God.

Yet in spite of knowing that, I've not spent nearly as much time "with" the Lord as I should. I've fallen into the deadly trap of putting off prayer, meditation, and "being" with Him in order to pursue what I thought at the time were more important things...like accomplishing the "to do" list for the day. I've got plenty of days when I accomplished all and more of what was on my to do list...but not enough days when I spent adequate time experiencing the Lord. It should be the other way around.

But as in many things in the Christian walk, there is no good in spending much time in regret except to enable and enhance my commitment to make the necessary change.

This world seems increasingly built upon the predication that importance is directly related to accomplishment. May I work more diligently to develop the countercultural thinking that accomplishment is not nearly as important as the development of the interior life of relating to the Lord. May I realize that all true accomplishment arises from an interior life that is vitally connected with the living God. Therefore, rather than sacrificing time in prayer, meditation, and communion with God in order to get to "accomplishing", I must sacrifice the feeling and high of accomplishment to focus on that which is truly important...becoming more like Christ.

It is not as easy as it sounds...especially if you've spent a lifetime living in that pattern. But I can hardly think of anything more important. Do I want to come to the end of my life with a long list of accomplishments that really don't matter...or do I want to come to the end of my life having drawn close to the One who made me?

Put that way...there really is no choice...